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Markets: Beware of False Profits

(Sheridan, WY) The mountain air must be clearing my head a bit too much.

When I see the stock market set to rally almost 200 points out of the chute this morning, I reach for the traveling ViseGrips and give myself a pinch.

Today’s rally will be largely based on the reports that the majority of the Greek parliament will endorse the latest bailout plan. The French are calling the proposal complete and it looks like the powers that be will rubber stamp this with the only question being how bad will the austerity measures be and how much will be stolen outright from the public?

No doubt, the market rally this morning will have something to do with these developments, but unfortunately for the whole world, this only sets up the fifth wave blow-off we have been telling Peoplenomics readers about.

Sure, some corporations are to report bigger earnings, but come on, stock buy-backs have a very dark side to them. What it means is that management of many companies can’t think of better investments. No new plant and equipment, money into research and developments…you name it.

Accounting chicanery comes and goes in seasons. Remember the last time we had a good dose of it? That was when EBITDA was making the rounds in high tech firms as the Holy Grail of growth models.

The wreckage from that kind of thinking was the tech wreck and people tend to forget that accounting’s hand was in that $5-7 trillion dollar disaster.

So when you hear about Greece, and when you hear about corporate profits soaring, look at the underlying qualities of what’s really going on. Greece just put on the yoke of debt and check to see if there have been stock buy-backs when big earnings come in.

Fed Standing on the Brakes

Simply this: The Federal Reserve is drying up its easy money policy. This means with less money being printed (by the truck load) the value of the money sloshing around will go up.

That will a) strengthen the US dollar, b) bring down the stock market (it takes less of powerful dollars and more of wimpy dollars to buy the Dow) and it means c) despite the HS&J (hype shuck and jive) about the TeePeePee, US exports will not be going up because our dollarsized goods will go up in price overseas.

Should I mention gold goes down?

Bet that makes you feel, swell, doesn’t it?

Still, when you see outfits like Ford planning to cut Focus and C-Max production (and maybe move it offshore) we have to remind you of a Trumpism:

“If you want a deal bad enough, you will make a bad deal.”

We are a country awash in bad deals, thank you.

And that gets us to…

Trump Presses On

Not a point in this campaign, but if you’re a conspiracy theorist, interesting to note The Don’s point about how some birthers have been promoted after dropping their inquiries. Like Hillary, for instance…

In an UrbanSurvival bar room poll conducted last night (sample =8) Trump is the clear leader over everyone with the one caveat that people worry he’s a Perot, II.

What most people seem to forget is that Ross Perot dropped out of the presidential bid back when under conditions that could be fairly labeled “duress.” Go over to AboveTopSecret and read some background info.

The biggest question about Trump is how will utterly corrupt corporate-owned government silence him?

Peak Oil’s Ahead

Another leak on the tube Thursday was Boone Pickens (or energy fame) saying that he expects oil will pass the $70 mark by the end of the year.

How long have I been writing to you about the Manufacturer’s Resource Wars? That’s what we’re in and nothing in the data, whether you’re talking oil, gas, bituminous, or lithium, suggests anything else.

The Federal Hack Attack

Confederate Distractophy

New word: “Distractophy.” Means the art and science of a made-up distraction, usually to keep people’s minds off the reality of what’s going on in the important world, as opposed to the MFW = media fiction world.

I can hardly wait for the next shoe to drop as political correctness disease sweeps America.

Yeah…let’s forget the horrible costs of Obamacare, which go up again in 2016. And let’s not talk the service economy bubble, the open border, the questionable presidential dictates, or how China is buying America out from under us.

Hell no. Have some more of this-here Kool-Aid.

I’m gonna start another distractophy right here: It’s way more important to rename the Dixie chicks something like the Tampa Tramps or Houston Hoes…because yes, brothers and sisters we have lost our collective minds.

More Jade Helm Perspective

My friend “warhammer” – the oak cluster dude has some good insight into what starts next week:

“George,

Found this little gem on joint military exercise Jade Helm 15 (aka JH15) while cruising the NET this AM:

If you lean to the ‘domestic conspiracy theory’ side of the isle, the ‘no media access’ aspect of this exercise proves that JH15 is the first step toward an Orwellian American future.

Knowing what I do about exercise planning and execution, I believe there are several more viable ‘real world’ purposes for this two month, 7-state ‘joint’ exercise (meaning more than one branch of the military is participating, not that weed will be liberally provided). An exercise of this size and scope is quite expensive and resource intensive.

Two scenarios, both involving areas far from the 4-corners region of the U.S., are my personal, plausible ‘real world explanations for this massive (and expensive) exercise.

First, JH15 could be a contingency planning event for anti-ISIS operations in Iraq, Syria and N. Africa. The climate of the 4-corners region is about right and there are large stretches of hostile, barren terrain. That said, I find it hard to imagine a military operation against ISIS that would not include at least some of the regional actors (such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, possibly Israel). With the kickoff for JH15 less than a week away, we see no sign of foreign exercise players. So this possibility has it’s a glaring weakness. Plus, if foreign players were involved, JH15 would be a ‘combined’ exercise (more than one nation participating) vice a joint one.

My second, more probable ‘best guess’ suggests anti-Iranian anti-nuclear Ops should the negotiations disintegrate and Iran starts ramping-up nuke fuel production. The U.S. could decide to take military action. Again, I’d expect a few neighboring foreign nations to be on the lineup card, but it is quite conceivable that the U.S. ‘go it alone’ so as not to precipitate a large-scale, long-term regional meat grinder of a war.

On ‘slide #6’ at the link above, notice where the JH15 ‘insurgent pocket’ is located? It’s the Salton Sea – Calexico region of S. California. This region aptly mimics the environment of the Persian Gulf, S. Mediterranean or Red Sea operations areas. Some food for serious thought.

Third, and last – JH15 could merely be a large scale special forces SERE (survival, evasion, resistance and escape) exercise. Of course, there are designated locations for this training, running from Panama to Alaska, so why seven states in the U.S. Southwest? SERE exercises generally do not include ‘insurgent pockets,’ but this could be an exception.

What about the ‘domestic police action’ list of possibilities? There’s a long string of conspiracy theories that, if true, would require a JH15 sized military presence. With all due respect to Mr. Badass himself, Chuck Norris, aka ‘Walker, Texas Ranger,’ I do not believe the JH15 exercise has domestic U.S. policing or crowd control actions anywhere in its released or classified rules of engagement.

That all said, all this conjecture about JH15 does bring back fond memories of the pre-climactic scene in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” when Richard Dreyfus and Melinda Dillon are approaching the Devil’s Tower, where the Army has set up a faux anthrax outbreak and quarantined the entire area around the Tower, complete with dead sheep strewn around the area, in order to prevent citizens from spying on an anticipated and highly unusual event. For what happens next . . . see the movie (I’m suddenly craving mashed potatoes!!!)

Cheers,

With Active Distractophy in the headlines, all we can do is shake our heads and remember Trump on the the art of the deal as it applies to Iran.

“If you want a deal bad enough, you will make a bad deal.”

And we have that to look forward to, once the public pressure builds to stop mollycoddling the mullahs and get on with it.

Verify or vaporize.

Even politically correct ‘Merican is going to get tired of being dicked around, eventually.

So let’s fix everything. Shut down the net, all hacks stop. People use the postal services again, people go back to libraries, the world of business slows down. All businesses are back that the net killed and everyone prospers (until the robots takeover).

Calexico is the town where 3 banks have recently been closed for good. Some say the town is the favorite drug laundering area for the Sinoloa, and the banks didnt want to spend resources to comply with federal requirements. Odd timing though.